Tag Archives: author-editor relationship

Writing and Editing

The Virtues of Sample Edits

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Like most editors, I’m willing to do free sample edits for prospective clients who request them. Typically, I’ll edit a thousand words or so–that’s four double-spaced pages. Of course, not all authors request a sample edit before hiring me; they determine from our email exchanges and the content of my website that somehow I’m the editor for them, so the sample edit gets skipped. But is it wise to skip it?  I’ll consider this question from the perspective of both the author and the editor.

Many authors who come to me have never been edited before and so are anxious. Being edited is a new and scary adventure to them, and many questions will course through their minds. Will I still recognize my writing after you’re done with it?  Will you stomp all over my style, my author’s voice? Are you skilled enough and sufficiently careful to catch even the most minuscule of errors?  (Can you even spell “minuscule”?) Will your comments be helpful and insightful, your criticisms gentle and respectful?  Ideally, the sample edit will answer all these questions and will reassure the author that the editor is suitable for the project. However, sometimes the author may decide that the editor is doing too much or not enough or is in some other way not right for them and will seek someone who’s a better fit. So the sample edit is often the deciding factor when it comes to which editor to hire.

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I’ve realized more and more over my nearly twelve years of freelance editing that the sample edit is every bit as valuable to me as it is to the author. First, it allows me to gauge how many pages per hour of the client’s work I can edit, thus making my cost estimates more accurate. Second, it allows me to ensure that the author is a good fit for me. (Yes, authors audition editors via the sample edit, but we audition authors too.) Point number two hit me like a ton of bricks recently, when I was approached by a woman I’ll call Vivian.

Vivian was a wonderful writer, though her writing still could have used an editor’s touch. After the initial friendly email chit-chat, things went south. Vivian kept saying she hadn’t received my estimate (I sent it four times). When she did get it, she wasn’t happy with my numbers and I had to justify them. She then requested a sample edit, and I sensed I should tread lightly. The bulk of my corrections were grammatical fixes, with some stylistic editing to fine-tune the odd cumbersome sentence. In marginal comments, I explained my reasons for the types of changes suggested. I also strongly advised Vivian not to use lyrics from songs that couldn’t possibly be in the public domain, explaining why this was a bad idea.

Sadly, Vivian responded with irritation. She thought I’d disrespected her writing voice–never my intention–and explained why my grammatical fixes and stylistic tweaks were unacceptable to her. Clearly, she had devised a lot of her own “rules”–more like personal idiosyncrasies, since from what I could see they were unrelated to known editorial style guidelines. We were speaking a different language. Vivian still wanted to work together, but I explained that if she was that upset upon seeing a short sample, she wouldn’t like the rest of the edited manuscript either, and I couldn’t risk having an unhappy client. I also couldn’t play by her rules when I had no way of anticipating what they would be; I’d be unknowingly violating them at every turn. I didn’t see how I could improve upon the edit I’d submitted to her and said I hoped she’d find a more suitable editor.

Vivian asked me to reconsider and returned the sample with her changes to my edits. She’d accepted very few of my suggestions, even the advice about lyrics. That sealed it for me: I knew I couldn’t work with her. I’m a reasonable person who never expects authors to accept all my suggestions, but if they accept next to nothing, then we’re obviously an editorial mismatch. Fortunately, in my experience such an extreme mismatch is rare. But if I hadn’t done the sample edit, I never would have known how incompatible we were until it was too late.

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Writing and Editing

Seeing Editors as Allies, Not Enemies

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I belong to an online writers’ and editors’ group, and when time allows, I entertain myself by catching up on the discussions in the forums. People generally behave themselves admirably, but the writers, most of whom are self-publishing, do lash out at editors from time to time. One day, I saw an author complaining that she’d been ripped off to the tune of three thousand dollars by an editor. Other forum participants were quick to become indignant that any editor would even dream of charging her such an amount to edit her book. What an outrage!

Feeling profoundly irritated, I wrote that it was ridiculous to consider the cost outrageous without knowing the facts–after all, the author hadn’t even mentioned what the word count was or told us anything about the nature of the book. Nor had we seen a sample of the writing. Without this information, no one could possibly know the extent of the editing required. And had anyone even considered the question of what the author actually received for her money? As she later revealed, the answer was nothing–she paid three thousand dollars to the “editor,” who never delivered any work at all. The unsuspecting  author had not been dealing with a professional editor–she’d fallen victim to a smooth-talking scam artist.

Apart from the author’s misfortune, what bothered me about this whole exchange was the readiness of the writers who were commenting to believe that editors are taking them for a ride. Apparently, some writers still don’t see the value in what editors have to offer. I suspect that those who feel this way have never actually had their own work edited, so they can’t even begin to understand the invaluable contributions an editor can make to a manuscript. As well, such writers fear criticism, as most of us do to one degree or another, but rather than being able to perceive it as helpful and constructive, they feel threatened by it. And so they insist on standing in their own way, and the book suffers as a result.

I still occasionally meet people who think that all editors do is correct typos; they confidently assert that they can do their own spell-check and grammar check, thank you very much–as if spelling and grammar were all there was to it. But editors are involved in shaping the entire manuscript, and they cover the broad strokes as well as the fine details. A good editor will diplomatically call attention to a plot that doesn’t even get off the runway, loose ends that dangle messily, a protagonist who bores readers to tears, or a character who talks like he’s a nineteenth-century British aristocrat instead of the twentieth-century American student he’s supposed to be. Furthermore, a good editor offers constructive advice for fixing these problems.

I believe that writers who don’t appreciate what editors can do for their work are in a small and ever-shrinking minority. But often the writers who need editorial help the most are the very ones who are most resistant to receiving it. It’s time that such resistant writers began to see editors as allies who can help them create their best possible work, not as enemies who will either take advantage of them or belittle them. All editors contend that every writer needs an editor, and most writers I know wholeheartedly agree with this contention. And as an editor who also writes, I know that I’ll need an experienced and eagle-eyed editor to help me with my book before I publish it; I wouldn’t dream of skipping this essential step. Even for the best writers, the choice is clear: if you’re putting your book out there for public consumption, hire a professional editor.

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